Who Coaches the Super Eagles Next – Nigerian or Foreigner?
The debate about who coaches the Super Eagles next has raged for months with opinions split down the middle about whether the Nigeria Football Federation should hire a local or foreign coach. On the extreme ends of the debate are those who think that simp
This decision is fundamental for the current NFF leadership and posterity will not remember the excuses. The fact is, under this administration Nigeria has failed to qualify for back-to-back Africa Cup of Nations finals - a first in our history. We also face the likelihood of missing out on the 2018 World Cup after being drawn in a deadly group alongside Algeria, Cameroon and Zambia. We should not analyse the danger we face by looking at history of 10-20 years ago and lacing our opinions with hope. I have followed African football on a daily basis for seven years and can tell you we act quickly to avert disaster. Algeria do not only have fantastic talents, the same of core of players have played together for over four years. They will become an even more dangerous prospect with the recent appointment of former Ghana coach Milovan Rajevac, a Serbian, to lead the team. Rajevac made the Black Stars incredibly difficult to beat and guided them to the final of the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations. They also came within a last-minute penalty miss of reaching the semi-finals of the World Cup in South Africa.
Cameroon have not been the Indomitable Lions of the not too distant future, but they have built steadily since their 2014 World Cup fiasco. Since that time they have retained a core of young talents who may not be on par with Algeria, but have better grit and pedigree, and have been quite successful in the last two AFCON qualifying campaigns. The same players played together at the 2015 Nations Cup and will be together again at the 2017 finals. Like Algeria, they are much further down the road in the team building and preparedness than Nigeria, especially having appointed their coach Hugo Broos, a Belgian, much earlier this year. Zambia are the only team in our group who, like us, are all over the place in their preparations, however the Chipolopolo have decent talent and pedigree in the African game. They are especially difficult to beat at home, while the Super Eagles have been poor travelers.
Talent alone might win you a few battles, but it is never going to win the war. Nigeria has impressive young talents coming through, but many have been untested at this level. Our experienced stars, truth be told, are largely of the middling variety. So now is when we need a skilled coach to do a delicate balancing act in the hope that he finds the right blend. In many ways, we would actually just be starting a new team and the new man may either subtract from, leave unchanged, add to or multiply the power of the team. We must put aside sen- timents and in bloodless fashion, choose a man who can multiply our successes.
My take
I was one of those who had little faith in Nigerian and African coaches until Stephen Keshi emerged in Nigeria, and Kwesi Appiah in Ghana. I saw Keshi breathe the kind of passion and patriotism into the Super Eagles that would be hard to see a foreign coach inspire. In Ghana, Appiah did same and turned the Black Stars from a low scoring side to a prolific machine highlighted by a 6:1 demolition of Egypt in a World Cup qualifier in Kumasi in 2013. However, I saw these two guys ultimately undermine themselves with team building decisions that showed they could not rise above the petty sentiments affect our ability to patiently build in sustainably successful ways. We have good attributes as a people, but sadly, we are not in general terms terrific builders. Since the Clemens Westerhof team of the 1990s I have not seen any Super Eagles team built in a patient and methodical way. While the NFF may have its demons, our building programs have usually been disrupted by unproductive sentiments that led to continuous in-fighting. Our coaches are forever fighting with their top players and wanting to run the camp like a second school boarding facility. And if a player does not show he is ‘disciplined’, which translates to bending to the every wish of the coach, then he is bad for the team. Too many times our coaches would select undeserving players for reasons other than the good of the country.
The choice before the NFF now is to get a builder, a coach who does not feel his ego is a bigger consideration than Nigeria. We also need a man who can break our requirements down into simple to follow steps, which unfortunately is not another of our strengths. We need a blueprint on how we can seamlessly build the Super Eagles from bottom up. Under Nigerian coaches, who by the way, have been in charge of our team for 14-and-a-half of the last 16 years, there has been no discernible pattern in how we build our teams. Were we to have a team at this time, as we did post the 1994 World Cup, I would vote for a Nigerian coach, but seeing that the goal is to build a competitive new team my preference would be a foreign coach.
There are many other ways we are off with the right foreigner at this time. First, the system needs to cleanse itself of all the poison infused by battles between local coaches. As the late Stephen Keshi and Sunday Oliseh noted during their time in charge, the biggest obstacle to the success of a local coach are his real or imagined local rivals. We also need a man who beyond the football on the pitch can get our rising players from the NPFL better opportunities with foreign clubs, one who would also make it easier to attract better friendlies. We also need a man who can bring the rest of his local support staff more in line with global developments in coaching. Crucially we need a man who will show our biggest stars the respect they deserve – because we need them firing.
Now why would a man like me, who has only ever supported a Nigerian club, Bendel Insurance FC, who thinks it is silly how we gush about European football instead of our own clubs and who relentlessly advocates support for the NPFL, support a foreign coach? Because we have to be clear about what puts food on the table of millions of Nigerians. Supporting our clubs and league creates the jobs and wealth in Nigeria, supporting the European game creates jobs overseas. If the Super Eagles fail because of a technical team of three Nigerians, thousands of Nigerian businesses and families would suffer huge losses in revenue. If a foreign coach can make us succeed and thousands of Nigerian families enjoy the dividends from the enhanced income from sponsorships, appearance fees, broadcast rights, endorsements, partnerships etc, that sounds like a better deal for my country to me.